The Holburne Museum

We went to the Holburne Museum in Bath yesterday to see an exhibition of work by Édouard Vuillard. What a treat! 

The exhibition is small, and some of the paintings very small indeed, but what a joy to get up close and see how he applies the paint and makes good use of the cardboard ground.

The room was dark and no flash allowed so it was difficult to photograph the work very well.

I've been a great admirer of his work since my student days. I bought a print of his work while on a study trip to Paris and it cheered a wall of my grotty student bedsit.

Another temporary exhibition at the museum was that of the children's illustrator, Lauren Child.

She uses collage in her illustrations, moving her small cut-out figures about the page. Interesting to read that she is influenced by Vuillard. You can see it in the way she places pattern on pattern.

Illustrations for Mary Poppins and The Secret garden.

I much prefer the immediacy of the sketchbook drawings to the finished result and the collaged photographs seem far too crude in colour and too literal for my taste.

I preferred this more elegant double page spread - and Vuillard would appreciate the pattern on pattern!

We had a happy wander around the museum's permanent collection.

No pattern on pattern for Priscilla.

I've been living in the area since 1968 but have only this week discovered that the museum is free on Wednesday afternoons. What a saving! I treated myself to the Vuillard catalogue  and a card with the £12.50 that would have been spent on my exhibition entry.

And Himself blew his entry money in the café where we had coffee and cake, sitting outside here in the sunshine.

Now that's what I call a good day out!